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CU-Boulder students take advantage of RTD 'hiccup'

CollegePasses were supposed to be turned off May 26

By Sarah Kuta, Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
08/01/2014 07:16:35 PM MDT

Updated:
08/02/2014 07:29:12 AM MDT

For the second year in a row, some University of Colorado students were treated to free bus rides after the Regional Transportation District failed to temporarily suspend their discounted student bus passes for the summer months.

The CollegePasses were supposed to be turned off May 26 for students not taking summer classes, unless they paid a standalone $85 fee to keep using the card.

But RTD doesn't yet have the capacity to easily suspend large numbers of passes, said spokesman Scott Reed.

Roughly 21,000 CU-Boulder passes should have been temporarily disabled, but instead, some students took advantage of the unpublicized glitch with free bus and light rail rides.

Once RTD's new "Smart Card" system is deployed entirely, the department will have greater capacity to suspend passes temporarily, Reed said. There is no timeline for the complete implementation of the new system.

Reed said the students who forked over $85 got what they paid for, regardless of the students who got free rides.

"No. 1, they received full value of what they paid for," he said. "No. 2, because that pass is good on any level of our service, if they had not been part of that program they would've paid $528 for three months' worth of regional passes. So it's a remarkable value to start with, and they did receive the value of what they paid for."

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In July, Reed said RTD researched the 21,000 Boulder campus cards that hadn't been paid for and found that 830 students, or less than 5 percent, used their CollegePass 20 or more times this summer.

Those 830 passes were suspended last month, Reed said.

"If they didn't reach that threshold, that 5 percent that we're talking about, then technically their card would still be valid, but we also know that so many students leave for the summer, it's really a non-issue," Reed said. "The vast majority had little or no activity on those cards."

The disabled passes were turned back on for students returning for the fall semester on Friday.

'Tight budget'

The summer pass situation didn't sit well with law student Caitlin Stafford, who thought she had no choice but to pay the $85 fee to keep her card active.

Stafford, who takes the bus from Boulder to Denver for an unpaid internship, is one of the 258 students who paid $85 to use their CollegePass this summer. She was frustrated to hear from other CU law students that even though they didn't pay the fee, their card still worked.

Her request for a refund from CU was eventually denied, she said.

"I already had what they wanted me to pay for," said Stafford, 29. "I ended up paying a fee that was unnecessary. I just want things to be fair. It was a mix-up, but you should right the mix-up."'

Stafford, who's in her third year of law school, and her husband, who graduated from CU Law in 2012, are working to pay off student loans. Every dollar counts, she said.

"We've incurred a mountain of debt," she said. "We're trying to do our best with the money we have. An extra $85 is money I can put toward buying groceries for the week. It might not seem like a lot to other people, but we are on a very tight budget."

Hiccups

For its part, the university is working to keep pressure on RTD to quickly finish upgrading its system.

CU pays roughly $4.5 million to RTD each year for the passes, said Dave Newport, director of CU's environmental affairs office. Other schools such as the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Denver also participate in the CollegePass program.

CU-Boulder students see an automatic $85 bus and bike fee on their tuition bill for each semester that they're enrolled in classes, Newport said.

That money covers the unlimited bus and light rail pass but also helps pays for campus bike programs, the Buff Bus, the Hop bus and other services, he said.

Newport said that with any new technology, there will be some "hiccups" along the way.

As for refunding the $85 some students paid this summer, CU officials said it would be inappropriate.

If one person pays for a ticket and another person sneaks into the theater, it's unlikely the theater would refund the ticket to the paying customer.

"It's unfortunate that the RTD system was not able to turn off those passes, and while I understand it's very annoying, and I would be annoyed as well, the fact of the matter is they paid for a summer pass and they got a summer pass," she said.

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